The 5 Bed 1 Bath Courtyard Mobile Home Subdivision

This design demonstrates the versatility of the NextGen courtyard based mobile home. A singlewide mobile home has 2 bedrooms each with king size beds, and a living room which converts to an additional 3 single beds. As well a long retractable pocket door can seal off the living room for undisturbed sleep. The design follows Frank Lloyd Wright's linear Usonian plan. Parking and storage are placed on the right side of the home with the courtyard / outdoor living placed on left as shown in the drawing below. The storage shed is divided into two equal parts apportioned to the residences on either side - a configuration best explained in pictures. This shed is part of a hybrid supplemental site built structure providing four separate services: A 3 car carport, supplementary storage, a covered entry way from carport to front door, and a built in, covered outdoor kitchen.

In keeping with Wright's emphasis on the living room, the singlewide living room is as large as possible with an L shaped 'wraparound' couch looking onto a large format projection TV screen. The kitchen is part of this 'open plan' of some 840 sq ft - as is the dining area. The bedrooms are long and narrow making use of Thomas Jefferson's alcove concept with a pair of king size bed. These bedrooms are also fitted with built in desks and bookcases intended to make them also function as office space. Now where the tiny home resorts to a cramped loft to incorporate an additional sleeping area, this design borrows from a strategy common to Europe where wraparound sofa banks double as beds - in this case 3 Twin XL's. As well and as mentioned above, a pocket door allows the living room to be closed off from the rest of the house so that sleep is not disturbed.

The outdoor courtyard space is landscaped with trees and flowers along with outdoor kitchen, living, and dining. Retractable awnings add color and charm and allow for the level of coverage to be dialed in depending on conditions. In the corner is a spa accessible by steps and permanently covered by a tin roof which also serves to brace the high wood privacy walls.

The NextGen Courtyard Mobile Home Park

The somewhat irregularly shaped lots work out to be 86 ft deep, 50 ft wide i.e. 4,300 sq ft or right at ten units per acre exclusive of street and sidewalk. I believe that mobile home subdivisions outfitted with treelined streets, attractively landscaped sidewalks, paved parking , decorative storage sheds, and the old world charm of the courtyard go a long way toward fostering not merely the acceptance of the manufactured home, but the full on embrace of the manufactured home as the preferred choice for the majority of homebuyers.

Thorstein Veblen points out that the status a purchase confers has come to predominate over whatever utility it might afford. Now I fear that the mobile home industry has failed to fully appreciate Veblen's keen insight which no doubt helps explain the fact that mobile homes make up only 5% of housing when one includes multi-family apartments. And while mobile homes will never win in Veblen's 'conspicuous consumption' category - they have what it takes to carve out a large niche in Veblen's other category 'conspicuous leisure'. By reworking the mobile home by way of Wright's Usonian design - and by 'packaging' this reworked design in a festive, private courtyard garden conducive to cultivated leisure, the mobile home can become the preferred choice for a large segment of future homebuyers.